A Kunoichi Sharp
by luvsanime02
Summary: One-shot. Part of my Maturity 'verse. Set around the same time as Not Even Close. "Sakura decided then and there to make sure she punched Naruto at an angle to hopefully smack him soundly off of their sensei's head."


**Disclaimer: **I don't own Naruto. That would be Kishimoto Masashi. I'm also making no profit off of this fic.

**AN: **Rated K+ for references to violence.This is a Sakura POV from around the same time Not Even Close takes place. (Edited 12.2013)

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**A Kunoichi Sharp **by luvsanime02

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Haruno Sakura did not whimper. She ground her teeth together out of sheer frustration while Naruto leaned forward to help untangle her hair. Sakura gave him a doubtful look but reluctantly let him try, seeing as how Sasuke-kun was now facing in the opposite direction and Kakashi-sensei was scouting ahead.

Not that the man wasn't entirely aware of what was going on behind him. Sakura's eyes narrowed as she saw that his gaze flitted everywhere but in her direction. Meanwhile, Naruto was… Actually, Naruto was about three seconds from getting his nose broken, good friend and teammate or not. If Sakura didn't know perfectly well that Naruto was trying to make things better instead of pulling all the hair out of one spot on her head he'd already be embedded into the tree Kakashi-sensei was now leaning against.

And _humming_. And still not looking their way, but rather up at the little wisps of clouds interspersed in the mid-morning sky. Sakura decided then and there to make sure she punched Naruto at an angle to hopefully smack him soundly off of their sensei's head. She was sure she could get the angle right if she twisted her spine just a little to the right. The pain would even be worth it.

"Uh, wait, that wasn't right," came a mutter from just behind her left ear. Sakura clenched her fists even more tightly until the black leather creaked. Hearing this, or perhaps finally showing a smidgen of common sense and reading her mood through her tense shoulders, or just plain being Naruto, he let out a nervous laugh.

"Ah, don't worry about it, Sakura-chan," he exclaimed, too cheerfully. Not to mention too loudly considering he was right next to her ear. "I've almost got it untangled. It's just this curl here wrapped up in this here…" His voice went from confident to mumbling to just petering out altogether, and it just wasn't _fair._

Why was Sakura the one whose hair got caught in the wire fence they were passing over? It wasn't even that high, only about eight feet. Any one of them could scale it in a second, and be on the other side in less time than even that, so why did it have to be Sakura who was the one slowing them down?

Another tug. This time, she felt some hair part company with her scalp. A tiny bead of moisture appeared in the corners of each of her eyes but she sucked them back in, too angry to really cry right now anyway, even from the pain.

It wasn't like she didn't keep her hair short to avoid this very scenario. That, and she still remembered the taunts and a hand gripping her hair forcefully, keeping her pinned. She still remembered shaking with fear. Not for herself, but because she'd been a twelve year old female genin and her teammates were both unconscious, which left her _alone_. They'd needed her to protect them for once, and she hadn't thought for a second that she was actually capable of doing so, try as she might.

So she'd cut her hair. And she'd started training, and then Sasuke-kun had torn her heart right out of her chest, leaving behind a gaping, hollow wound that still had pieces of shredded skin fluttering in the breeze of each ragged breath her lungs took. And then she'd started training again, for real, and her hair hadn't been longer than her shoulders since she was twelve years old and her greatest ambition in life was getting Uchiha Sasuke to think her forehead looked cute.

She'd trained, and she was strong. She was the strongest kunoichi in her age group, which was saying a lot against families like the Hyuuga and the Yamanaka, and it still wasn't enough because she hadn't been able to do anything. She wasn't the one who'd fought Madara and lived. She wasn't the one who'd faced down their teammate-turned-traitor and told him to get over it or they'd die together. And actually, Sakura was still furious about that. How dare Naruto think that he could just _die _like that? How dare he think only of saving Sasuke-kun and not of what it would have done to her to go home that night and realize she didn't have a team anymore?

What was she supposed to have done with her life then? Quit being a kunoichi and make friends with the civilian girls her age in the village? Find a clumsy, flabby, fumbling boy and marry _him _one day instead? Get assigned to another team? Get promoted, now that she would no longer be deliberately held back from taking the jounin exams, move out on her own and become an old maid? Become a sensei herself and spout lies and niceties about how your team was your family, even though hers would have abandoned her to live her life without a leg to stand on? Her brain didn't scream denials. Her brain, for all the acclaim it received amongst her peers, didn't even know how to _begin_ listing the pros and cons of choices made with no Sasuke-kun and no Naruto in her life. How could they be so selfish, the both of them? How could they always expect her to be left behind? It wasn't fair that even though she was strong she still wasn't an _equal_, and-

And they really didn't have the time to waste here while Naruto tried to untangle her hair from this fence. C-Rank mission or not, they were on a strict time schedule that Kakashi-sensei had already made them late enough for. Sakura could see, off to her far right, Sasuke-kun shift his weight from his left foot to his right and knew he felt the same, although she couldn't stop the small wriggle of happiness in her stomach that he still didn't say anything to hurry them along. Or simply go on ahead without them.

Still. She sighed, explosively, and Naruto's fingers froze, feeling like they were even more tangled in her hair than the wire was. Brusquely, she pulled out a kunai and flipped it around so that the handle was pointing outwards, extending it behind her left shoulder. "Here," she said quietly. Her anger was already forgotten. It had been no one's fault, after all. Not even hers.

There was a moment of hesitation, but then she felt fingers carefully unthreading from her hair before the kunai was taken from her hand. Letting her arm drop back down to her side, she braced herself for more pulling on the already tender area.

Naruto's cuts were quick, uncharacteristically precise, and… didn't hurt at all. He'd wrapped his left hand around the hair closer to her skull so that it wouldn't pull. Unexpectedly, Sakura felt a lump rise in her throat that she worked on swallowing back down for the next few seconds.

Then, she was free, and Sakura gingerly moved her neck for the first time in several minutes, ignoring the slight strain in her muscles. She turned around, and Naruto was standing there looking down with something akin to disbelief at the inch-long pink strands in his hand that he had picked off of the fence. Despite herself, she felt her face pull up into a slight smile. She quietly reached out and plucked her kunai from his other hand.

"Thanks, Naruto." And just like that, he grinned, the same grin he had when they first met back at the academy, and Sakura felt the warmth of the sun bathe her in its glow for a few short moments.

"Heh, sure," he replied, letting her hair fall to the ground, a quick scrape of his sandal shifting enough dirt so that the strands were completely hidden from view. Nodding approvingly, and still feeling that warm energy inside, Sakura turned to their last teammate. Who was now watching them silently, and probably had been since she brought out her kunai, in fact.

She looked Sasuke-kun straight in the eyes and nodded her readiness. In response, he started walking forward as though no time had elapsed at all, and Sakura was eternally grateful. Even more so when Sasuke-kun waited until she and Naruto had walked past him side by side before he fell into step behind them, acting as the rear-guard now instead of making her retake the position. Maybe, next time, it would be Sasuke-kun's hair getting stuck in a wire fence.

No, it was definitely going to be Kakashi-sensei's, and Sakura was going to make sure of this by walking up to him very nicely and then casually shoving his head through the jagged parts of the wires herself. The man _still_ had the nerve to be humming.


End file.
